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By Alan Quartly
BBC correspondent in Moscow
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It was an experimental military unit set up at the height of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
To reverse mounting casualties among inexperienced conscripts, Russian generals set up "Kaskad".
In the woods near Moscow,
the soldiers learnt survival skills, shooting, hand-to-hand-combat and
"the art of destroying the enemy".
The difference was that some of these troops were just 10 years old.
Eight-year-old Vanya Gladchenko is already a veteran
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That was in 1982. Twenty years later, Russian troops have long since
left Afghanistan, but the kids of Kaskad are still training.
These days the cadets,
aged 10 to 16, don't necessarily go on to join the army, but those who
do, are far better prepared for conscripts' life than those who don't.
Russia's army is
notorious for its brutal bullying and underfunding. Many of today's
soldiers face the real prospect of active duty in war zones like
Chechnya.
The kind of people who make it are those you can rely on, who won't let you down later on
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Misha Tsybulevsky, 14,
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The members of Kaskad all say they want to become soldiers in Russia's spetznaz, or special forces, units.
Misha Tsybulevsky, 14,
has been attending the military courses for four years. When we met him
at Kaskad's summer camp he had just crawled out of a swamp on his
belly, clutching his model Kalashnikov, while his instructors fired
volleys of blank shots and let off smoke grenades.
For Misha, Kaskad's spetznaz training provides the best preparation if you're going to be called up.
Misha Tsybulevsky says cadets learn to have courage
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"You earn courage. The people who join the spetznaz are the best," he
said, "not like people who smoke and drink on the street. Those people
don't make it. The kind of people who make it are those you can rely
on, who won't let you down later on."
The organisers of Kaskad
stress the social role of the group. They claim the month-long summer
camp in the forest outside Moscow keeps many children from deprived
backgrounds off the streets.
But it's hard to escape the military thread running through everything the children do.
As Andrei Samotoin,
himself a former spetznaz soldier and now one of the Kaskad leaders,
points out, the army is very happy to have a supply of well-prepared
youngsters to conscript.
We make patriots out of the kids who come here
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Instructor
Vadim Volkov
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"There's already a tradition that kids from our unit will go on to
serve in various spetznaz units," he says. "Some of them go on to serve
in Chechnya. They have a good reputation among officers and men."
It's no surprise, says
Andrei, that for the second year running the army has supplied officer
cadets from across Russia to work as instructors for these boy
soldiers. Certainly they see themselves as a replacement for the
network of now defunct Soviet youth organisations.
"We used to have the
Komsomol and the pioneers. Now the kids do what they want. But we make
patriots out of the kids who come here," says Vadim Volkov, one of the
instructors.
I have a dream of becoming a commander and destroying all Russia's enemies
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Vanya Gladchenko, eight
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Queuing up for his mess tin of porridge at the camp's field kitchen is
Vanya Gladchenko. He's only eight years old, but in Kaskad terms, he's
already a veteran with four years' service under his belt.
The patriotic side of his education at Kaskad has already left its mark.
"I want to defend my
motherland so that nobody insults it and to protect the Russian
people," says Vanya. "For me, being a spetznaz is my life. I have a
dream of becoming a commander and destroying all Russia's enemies."
Since 1982 more than
8,000 children have passed through the ranks of Kaskad. According to
the commanders, in the last 10 years former cadets have fought in all
the wars that have flared up across the territory of the former USSR.
And, they say, not one of them has been killed.
With more than 4,000 dead in the last two years of war in Chechnya, that's no mean feat.
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